Readarounds in Child and Youth Care

Towards a common denominator in effective group care programming

Jerome Beker and Reuven Feuerstein

The observation that many institutions belied these evolving models led
Goffman (1961) to paint a less optimistic picture of residential care
realities in his description of what he characterized as “total”
institutional environments. He identified and elaborated a variety of
demoralizing and depersonalizing processes in such settings that appeared to
be linked to their “underlying structural design” (p. 124) and that must be
addressed if residential programs are to play a significant positive role in
delivering developmentally appropriate services to those whose lives in
their home environments are untenable.

“Powerful” Institutional Environments

Wolins (1974), on the other hand, reported research results from several
countries supporting the efficacy of well conceived and implemented
residential care programs, which have the benefit of being able to utilize
what he termed the “powerful environment” that is characteristic of the
residential setting – powerful because of its very pervasiveness or, in
Goffman’s (1961) terms, totality. Perhaps paradoxically, it is the “flip
side” of that totality – the isolation from “normal” life outside the
community and its requisite skills and behaviors – that has often been
adduced to explain the apparently low success rates of many residential
programs.

Based on his research, Wolins (1974) proposed the following six criteria
for successful programs, criteria that have been broadly accepted as crucial
variables in the field, although there has been disagreement in some cases
as to the desirable direction along the continuum.

1. Positive expectations on the part of the staff with regard to
children and youth in group care, including belief in the modifiability of
human personality and behavior in later childhood and adolescence. Although
this has traditionally required an act of faith for many in the helping
professions (particularly in the United States, where the idea that the
effects of early experience are largely immutable has often seemed to be
sacrosanct), evidence that has been accumulating in the past two decades
suggests that the nature of human development does permit later modification
than has often been assumed to be reasonably possible. Feuerstein, Hoffman,
Rand, Jensen, Tzuriel, and Hoffman (1986), for example, cite a variety of
studies that counter the “critical age” hypothesis and suggest that
cognitive modifiability persists throughout the life cycle. Drawing on
extensive research of their own as well as the work of others, Kagan & Klein
(1973) conclude that

If the first environment does not permit the full
actualization of psychological competencies, the child will function below
his ability as long as he remains in that context. But if he is transferred
to an environment that provides greater variety and requires more
accommodations, he seems more capable of exploiting that experience and
repairing the damage wrought by the first environment than some theorists
have implied. (p. 961)

2. Permanency of commitment, referring to the acceptance of
responsibility for the young people involved until they reach maturity. This
concept is allied with, although not identical to, the more recent notion of
permanency planning, as detailed by Maluccio, Fein, and Olmstead (1986).
Although Wolins (1974) viewed this in the context of long-term group care,
it could be defined more broadly as linked to a continuum of care as long as
continuity in key personnel and social atmosphere or environment can be
maintained.

3. Social integration within the Larger Social Milieu, including
both the community that is the residential center itself and the “outside”
community of which it is a part. This suggests that young people in group
care must be treated within and relate to each of these entities as
"citizens" rather than merely in a client or “inmate” role (e.g., Arieli,
Beker, & Kashti, 1990; Barnes, in press; Beker, in press;Levy, 1991). This
is, of course, a clear break with the “total environment” notion and the
idea that was often implicit and sometimes explicit in such concepts as
“therapeutic milieu,” namely, that round-the-clock consistency attained
through total environmental control is crucial. This criterion of Wolins
(1974) is in much closer harmony with more recent approaches, such as
normalization (Wolfensberger, 1972), deinstitutionalization (Lerman, 1982),
and community-based programming, that transcend residential settings (see
also Beker & Feuerstein, 1991). Even within such settings, however,
simulations of the larger social milieu that provides such opportunities can
often be devised and implemented (e.g., Barnes, in press).

4. Peer impact respected by the staff, who view the peer group
as (at least potentially) a legitimate and healthy developmental resource in
influencing children and youth in group care toward maturity and work with
it accordingly (e.g., Brendtro & Ness, 1983).

5. Socially constructive work to be performed by young people in
care is given a major role in the program, to develop both feelings of
ownership and a sense (and reality) of competence and being needed. Legal
and political obstacles to such programs have arisen in some settings,
particularly in the United States, but their importance in helping the young
people to see themselves as serving rather than simply being served, as
being helpers rather than simply those who are helped, has increasingly
begun to be recognized (Barnes, in press; Beker, in press; Beker & Durkin,
1989). Work opportunities can be reflected in the informal system of
behavioral options or available roles in group care (e.g., White, 1984) and
in the formal programming realm (e.g., Brendtro, 1985).

6. An overarching ideology, viewed as more important than the
specifics of what the ideology is, is needed to provide emotionally and
socially uprooted young people accustomed to much confusion in their lives
with, in Wolins’ words (1974, p. 289), a firm “moral anchorage.”